Eleven years after Geralt of Rivia first rode out of White Orchard, CD Projekt Red is rebuilding the game that made the studio. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered was announced during Gamescom Opening Night Live on August 25, and it arrives on September 29, 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. If you already own the game, you are not paying for it.
That is a short runway by CD Projekt Red standards — announcement to release in five weeks, at a show where most of the schedule was 2027 and beyond. It is also the second Witcher 3 announcement in as many days: joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski used the same week to confirm that The Witcher 4 is targeting 2028, which makes the remaster and its expansion the studio's plan for the three years in between.
This is a rebuild, not a resolution bump
The 2022 next-gen update was mostly about presentation: ray tracing, faster loading, a handful of quality-of-life fixes and some Netflix-inspired armour. The remaster is a different scope. CD Projekt Red is co-developing it with Yigsoft, a Hungarian AAA studio, and the feature list reaches into systems the 2015 game has never really had touched.
On the presentation side there are the expected enhanced visuals and performance improvements. Underneath that, the list is more interesting:
- Combat — upgraded mechanics, new finisher animations, and new effects for the witcher signs.
- Traversal — improved movement, with modified mantling and climbing. Anyone who has watched Geralt refuse to step over a knee-high fence knows exactly which decade-old complaint this is answering.
- Roach — revamped mount handling.
- Monsters — enhanced enemy behaviours, which in a game built around bestiary preparation is the change most likely to alter how the thing actually plays.
- Progression — a skill tree revamp, plus transmogrification, so armour stats and armour looks stop being the same decision.
- Photo mode — expanded.
The free upgrade, and the fine print
Existing owners get the Remastered version at no cost "on qualifying platforms" — CD Projekt Red's phrasing, and worth noting, because the platform list for the remaster now includes Switch 2, which never had a Witcher 3 licence to inherit from. Owners of the 2019 Switch port are the obvious question mark there, and the studio has not spelled that case out.
The more generous half of the announcement is the expansions. Every current owner gets complimentary access to Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, which have been sold separately for a decade. If you bought the base game in a sale years ago and never went back for Toussaint, that is roughly 50 hours of the series' best writing turning up for free.
Songs of the Past: Letten, and a chain weapon
The same slot gave Songs of the Past its first real look. CD Projekt Red announced the expansion back in May — the first new Witcher 3 story content since Blood and Wine in 2016 — and it is still due in 2027, now with Fool's Theory co-developing. The Polish studio, founded in 2015, has been working on CD Projekt Red's remake of the first Witcher, so it is not a random hire.
What is new is the destination. Songs of the Past takes Geralt to Letten, described in the announcement as an idyllic land of rural tradition hiding a dark secret just below the surface — which is, to be fair, the premise of approximately every good Witcher contract. Geralt picks up a new chain weapon for it, and the teaser points at adversaries the series has not used before.
One quiet correction from May: the expansion's platform list now reads PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2, plus Battle.net. The original announcement had no Nintendo hardware on it at all. The remaster is what makes that possible.
Why now
The commercial logic is not subtle. The Witcher 3 has spent eleven years as one of the most reliably re-purchased games on any storefront, and CD Projekt Red is about to spend two more years with nothing else to sell — The Witcher 4 has 500-plus developers on it and a 2028 target, and the studio skipped Gamescom's show floor entirely this year. A free remaster keeps the back catalogue in front of players, a paid expansion in 2027 monetises it, and both of them put Geralt on Switch 2 while that install base is still growing.
It also sets a bar. If the traversal, monster AI and skill tree work lands, this becomes the definitive way to play a game a lot of people have already played twice. If it does not, it is a free patch with a new photo mode — and September 29 is close enough that nobody will be waiting long to find out.
